15 February 2017 2:17 PM

NATO's soldiers went home in 1989. Why did its pen-pushers keep their jobs?

Have you noticed that there is no alliance to counter the threat posed by Austria-Hungary? Why ever not? It only ceased to exist in 1918, and Austria is still there maintaining a grandiose capital in Vienna. Who knows when there might be a resurgence of Habsburg power?

To me, such an alliance makes just as much sense today as NATO does in the Year of Grace 2017. Now, unlike most modern NATO enthusiasts, I go back a long way with this organisation. In the mid-1980s it was as fashionable in British politics and media to favour nuclear disarmament as it is now to despise and fear Russia. And it was as unfashionable then to back NATO, is it is now to point out that Russia doesn't actually threaten us. I was right then. I think I'm right now. When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?

Almost everyone I met or knew back then was against the installation of American cruise missiles in Britain, and of Pershing-2 missiles in Germany. The BBC and much of the press gave vast and sympathetic coverage to the Greenham Common ‘Peace Camp’, a ramshackle township of mainly female leftists which sought to prevent the deployment of cruise missiles at the airfield there. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which had until then been a dusty relic of the 1950s, revived. Joan Ruddock became a major figure, as did Monsignor Bruce Kent, never off the TV.

I thought the Greenham Common ‘peace camp’ was a disgrace and a folly. I supported deployment of cruise missiles there. I thought they were an essential counterweight to the SS-20 'Pioneer' rockets being installed in Eastern Europe at the time by the USSR.

While all my Oxford neighbours had ‘No Cruise’ stickers on their cars and houses, I actually persuaded a friend at NATO HQ in Brussels to send me some rare NATO bumper stickers to put on my car. I believed then, as I believe now, that without a European-based nuclear counterweight to the SS-20s, deterrence would falter and the huge conventional power of Soviet forces then in Germany would compel Western Europe to fall under Moscow’s influence.

I believe the failure of the (Soviet-backed) campaign to prevent cruise installation was the beginning of the end of Soviet power.

And I rejoiced to see NATO’s victory.

So I was astonished, after Soviet Power had gone the way of the Habsburgs, to find that the defensive alliance, created in response to the Soviet Threat, was not only still in existence, but also expanding.

The only result was to irritate Moscow, which had, in the years since the collapse of the USSR, made absolutely no significant threat to those states formerly in its power which had become independent. Find me any evidence of such a threat, if you can. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland had cast off Soviet influence in 1989, along with East Germany and Romania. I was there. I saw it happen. I rejoiced at it.

The Baltic states cast off Soviet power in 1991. Likewise, I was there, I saw it happen. I rejoiced at it.

Name me, if you can, any event of any importance between 1989 and 1999 (when these capitals became NATO capitals) which gave Prague, Budapest or Warsaw the slightest reason to suspect that a revanchist Moscow sought to reconquer them.

Likewise, name me, if you can, any reason for Sofia, Bucharest, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius or Bratislava to fear a Russian reconquest between 1991 and 2004, the years these capitals became NATO capitals.

The point about the original, proper, sensible NATO was that it was a *reaction* to the clear and obvious actions of the USSR, which had in a series of rigged elections and coups d’etat turned all the states in what was to become the Warsaw Pact into Communist dictatorships.

NATO’s foundation in 1949 was a defensive response to a palpable aggression, perhaps most miserably shown in the putsch which destroyed the last vestiges of liberty in Prague in 1948.

It made no boasts of plans to roll back Soviet power. It had none, and indeed sat and did nothing when the USSR crushed risings in Poland , East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and when it built the Berlin Wall, Nothing. It was a defensive alliance. It said, credibly, ‘Take one step further, and we will fight’.

Then, its famous Article Five was entirely believable. It was guaranteed by large US, German and British forces stationed permanently in the path of any further Western advance, crucially backed up by a clear threat of nuclear war (renewed and restated by the arrival of cruise missiles at Greenham Common and RAF Molesworth).

These forces were dismantled after 1989 because there was clearly no more need for them. But, while it was easy to disband one of the biggest armies ever assembled on earth, it proved much harder to get rid of a few hundred bureaucrats in Zaventem, in the suburbs of Brussels. They are still there. Why?

Although NATO no longer had any serious forces, it became noisier and noisier, in the way of empty vessels, and accrued more and more members. I will be turning in a future blog to Peter Conradi’s interesting new book ‘Who Lost Russia?’, but I will just mention here that he says there were major political lobbies in the USA for NATO expansion, which do not seem to have been entirely unconnected to weapons manufacturers hoping to sell their wares to the new members.

But I am getting ahead of myself. The new NATO (unlike the proper version I recall and defended against modish criticism) had almost no muscle at all. It had and has no serious conventional military bulk to deter a conventional war and provide a series of tripwires between tension and a nuclear exchange. It really has nothing but British, French and American H-bombs, which it does not actually control.

Its promise to stand by any member if attacked, once credible because of the compactness of the organisation and its acceptance of the status quo, is now totally incredible. No US President will actually sacrifice Chicago for Bucharest or Riga or even Warsaw. No French president will sacrifice Paris for Tallinn. No British prime minister will sacrifice London for Vilnius. the danger is that irresponsible, demagogic governments in these states (not impossible to imagine) might think that the pledge is genuine, and act accordingly -as Poland acted in 1939, after the worthless, empty, lying Anglo-French guarantee. Whoever benefited from that heroic piece of idealism and crazy courage, it certainly wasn't Poland, which to all intents and purposes disappeared from the map soon afterwards, amid hideous terror and slaughter.

So the NATO promise ti the new NATO states, (in the long history of grandiose, stupid guarantees made by this country when it had no intention of keeping them) is actively destabilising.

Let me provide a sort of example: The absurd 2008 war which Georgia started against Russia (Yes it did, do your homework, the EU’s independent Tagliavini report clearly concluded that Georgia started it) .

Here we have a small, powerless country close to Russia , led by an immature and romantic figure who had come to power in a mob putsch, thinking that he could gain an advantage over Russia by dragging the NATO powers into a conflict with Moscow.

Luckily for us, good sense prevailed. Moscow responded, counter-attacked and then withdrew. The Western powers were too sensible to be dragged in, though I seem to remember a certain Tory leader grandstanding a bit. But it could very easily have been otherwise, and had Georgia been (as it sought to be and as some people had seriously suggested ) a NATO member, we could actually have seen a shooting war between US and Russian troops in the Caucasus.

Maybe you fancy that. If so, I recommend a cold compress, a darkened room, a trip to a war cemetery and (if that doesn’t calm you down) a visit to a hospital for war-wounded civilians and soldiers, anywhere (there are plenty to choose from in this idealistic age).

I am (as anyone who covered the fall of the USSR must be) sympathetic to the nations and people who emerged blinking from the Soviet prison-house after 1989 and 1991. For many months of 1991 I actually hated the company of Russians because of what I had seen the Soviet Army do in Vilnius. I had rejoiced at the fall of the hammer and sickle in Bucharest, Prague and Budapest, and run, with the defiant crowds, from the People ‘s Police during anti-Communist demonstrations in East Berlin.

But I absolutely cannot see how rebuilding NATO helps to keep these nations safe or free. I share the view of Professor Richard Sakwa, which is that the rebuilt NATO has fed and stoked the very fear from which it claims to guard its new members.

Russia has legitimate concerns. It has plenty of recent experience of being invaded, including the starvation siege of Leningrad, now St Petersburg. This city is just 84 miles from Narva, the border town at the eastern edge of NATO Estonia.

Look it up on a map . How would Sir Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, feel if the West Midlands declared independence from the UK, and soon afterwards there were Russian troops stationed in, say, Coventry, which is as far from London as Narva is from St Petersburg? Not happy, I’d guess.

Russia’s sensitivity about hostile armies on its borders is not some sort of pathology, but a perfectly reasonable position. If we continue to treat it with contempt, we will make trouble where no trouble was, and live to regret it. And for what reason? What do we gain from this? We, who massage our defence expenditure by cramming the intelligence budget and some pensions into it, to look as if we are spending substantially on defence when in fact we are letting our conventional forces fall apart with poverty and neglect.

Why did NATO’s pen-pushers not go home, when its soldiers did? It’s a question worth asking over and over again.

No problem, but with these regular bouts of inconsistency how can we be sure that anything you say is accurate? It's clear that you are creative with the truth at the best of times, whether that's down to sipping too much champagne with Richard Branson, or a cheap attempt at political point scoring, I'm not sure? Perhaps John has taken a permanent vacation after the failure of you and others to understand his troubles, or the realisation that nothing is likely to change has finally pushed him over the proverbial cliff edge? It's all very well appealing to the 'masses' but unless your heart is in it you won't really understand the problems people face, or address them. We saw this with Cameron, a mediocre PR man whose mouth often moved a lot but nothing of any substance came out. Unfortunately, you cannot please all of the people all of the time. The problem is, your policies please none of the working people, none of the time.

Forgive me, about the name error, that is. I can only put it down to age, whereas my young sparring partner, John (he's taken another of his regular sabbaticals, it seems) is, I imagine, a rather youthful student of something or other.

Actually, when it comes to Corbyn, I rather agree with the comment you quoted. I wonder almost every day whether I'm (possibly along with millions of others) being ripped off by the suppliers of energy and water, all gifted in the art of obfuscation, and who seem to think I should read their meters!

Whether Corbyn is the right man as far as Labour is concerned, I have my doubts. It's all very well leaving the choice of leader to party members, but a leader who only appeals to the converted is never going to gain power. Pleasing the masses (of potential voters, that is) is still the only way.

My goodness Alan, you aren't very quick at all are you. Of course I know you despise UKIP having accused them of all sorts of things here. When I said your 'buddy' I would have assumed you got the joke, I was being ironic Alan. As for 'letting me imagination run away with me', is that so? How is it then that today Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn said 'for too long people have been ripped-off and sold out'. I couldn't have put it better myself, as a matter of fact, these are the exact things I've been saying here for some time, which you have shrugged off as irrelevant or my 'vivid imagination'. Perhaps Alan, it's your imagination that isn't vivid enough as you only seem to see things within your own little bubble.

PS My name is Martin not 'Michael', I thought you might have got my name right by now Alan, particularly as you were criticising John for the exact same thing!

PS Alan, belated commiserations, I see your buddy lost in Stoke-on-Trent. On the flip side, there might be one more house up for grabs in Stoke once the 'For Sale' signs go up outside Mr. Nuttall's recently purchased palace.

That means we only now have another 300,000 properties to find for people sleeping on the streets, and only tens of millions to build for those sleeping in cars, in caravans, on couches, in hostels, in garden sheds, flea-ridden bed sits, unsuitable accommodation, or still living with their parents. Crisis...what crisis?

I don't think I'm slow on the uptake as I have watched our many problems develop for some fifty years or more.
My many travels abroad began in 1954, when, at the age of 16, I started to wonder why we didn't do certain things that seemed sensible to me, behaved as we often seemed to do, and generally seemed to think we were placed here to invent, make, and sell to the world, the best things in life. I quickly began to wonder if our past was not our biggest problem, but all that would make this short story far too long.

That said, I agree it would not be a good idea to forsake the comfort of our newly-invented soap box (the internet!) for a seat in the hothouse of Westminster.

I'm not going to prolong the agony of ramming home these simple points much further, which are most obvious for any reasonably intelligent person to comprehend. Whether you are being deliberately argumentative, or just not very quick on the up-take, only you will know. To clarify, there is a huge housing crisis caused by stagnant wages and mass immigration, encouraged by liberal elites to make themselves richer at the expense of ordinary working people. They bought properties for approximately ten times the price that people now have to pay. They have failed to build anything like the number of homes required to sustain it, especially considering they encourage a city the size of Coventry to move here every year. If you don't see this as a recipe for disaster then clearly you must reside in another galaxy to me. Once again, I will repeat what I have already told you which is when I say, 'I voted like they did' I just mean agreed with but didn't bother because I don't want to play their political game.

Who do I advise you to vote for? In my opinion, every ballot paper must now include an extra option for 'None of the above'. That way we might stand the slimmest chance of getting someone new in, but whether they would be any better, in a society founded on X-Factor morals, I wouldn't be so sure. And before you ask if I am going to stand for Parliament the answer is no. I offer opinion and advice, if you don't choose to follow it then that's your choice, but I won't be responsible for the disasters that follow.

Just another question to add to my previous short list: having read your more recent posts elsewhere, and thinking back to your emphatic statement about not voting last June, is this because no existing party offers what you seek? At times it seems your main concern is for the 'hard-working common man', for long seen as the priority of 'old Labour.

So, in your own blog do you offer any present party as the solution to 'our problems'? I ask as I cannot remember reading any advice here from your good self as to which party deserves support come election day, not that you are alone here in doing that.
If I sense correctly, UKIP hasn't turned you on, you appear to detest liberals, leaving the vast majority of would-be voters the choice of Mrs May or old-style Labour.

Wow, you certainly have a very sensitive fuse, Martin. Not always conducive to clear thinking, or reading, for that matter. Please read just a few points that I raise here and let me have your thoughts...

House Prices - of course prices are cheaper up North compared to down South, leading to the beginnings of a movement of young, working people from S to N - the theme of the tv programme on Channel 4 that I referred to. The main emphasis was on younger people earning average London salaries who cannot afford to buy a place. There is almost certainly a much bigger movement of older people seeking to 'cash in' come retirement by moving North and pocketing the difference as a nest egg for retirement, a common practice for many years.

Over-spending and Over Indulgence - I assume you mean by people who borrow money in order to buy more than they need or can afford (you might also mean people who eat more than they need, plenty of evidence of that for all to see). Mind you, I am aware that governments are guilty of over-spending, particularly as elections approach.

NB, If you have a moment can you please get back to me to clarify what you meant by ' People who voted as I did', having earlier claimed not to have voted.

I'd love to know what 'nonsense' I have said because, from where I'm sitting, all of the things I've said are perfectly true. I never said you went to University, I simply gave an example of the ludicrous things that Blairites come out with. in their attempt to promote themselves as more intelligent, superior beings, when the reality is they lack any moral backbone. Yes times change but never before in this country has one generation been poorer than the last, until now, and in my opinion, it amounts to nothing more than inter-generational theft. We are now paying for their over-spending, over-indulgence and ridiculous decision-making.

You are trying to defend the indefensible and make excuses for these people but I suggest you put your efforts into something more meaningful. If you wish to help refugees and migrants then that's really good, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and stump up some money to proper charities who can actually help these people at source, rather than defending people who bomb them, and also sitting there lecturing others who don't have the money what they should be doing. Start taking responsibility for the mess that you created instead of leaving others to pick up the pieces. It's not brain surgery Alan, it's called being a decent human being.

Just when I think you've joined the ranks of those who enjoy a chat without spraying out all sorts of nonsense, off you go again.

What makes you think I went to university (if that is what you mean)?

Of course the goal posts have moved, they've been moving back and forth for centuries; new technology has meant that the speed of change has increased immensely in recent times. One enormous change (that seems to appeal to rapidly growing numbers) is that you don't have to go to the local shops to buy many items that you need or want, or to work in a factory to design a new whatsoever. So many have - and more will realise - that living 'near the job' is less relevant than it was in the past.
Hence a more mobile workforce and the question as 'why do we have to live in hyper-expensive London?

I recognise the approach of Mr. Thomas which is the typical Blairite mentality. People in London can afford nice houses so why can't you? If you can't buy a house in London go up North and find one there, that's nothing to me? If you want a good house why don't you go to University like I did? The problem with these phony arguments is they are a patronising way of pretending away a real problem and the fact that the goalposts have been moved. These things are now much harder for the younger generation than they were for the previous one, without them getting into huge levels of debt. It's also a shameless attempt to turn around and blame the people who have lost out because of their selfish money-grabbing behaviour, for the position they were forced into through no fault of their own. It's like someone buying out a village's food supply for £10 and selling it back to them in drabs and drabs at £50 per slice of bread.

Where has this sudden preoccupation with London come in? I don't live in London and I recognise the existence of other parts of the country. Nor am I jealous of anybody living in rip-off central. As far as I was aware, that aren't many British born people left patrolling the streets of London are there? I thought they were now in a minority while the police have disappeared in a puff of smoke? Half of the properties are unoccupied aren't they, owned by foreign property tycoons who rent them out once in a blue moon to wealthy tourists or Russian oilgarchs? i suppose there are a lot of so-called 'common men' renting someone's garden shed for a grand a month but that's what the 'common man' is now supposed to do. Live in a shed while the huge mansion next door remains unoccupied as the wealthy owner sits tight holding out for his full asking price. As for 'broad brushstrokes', please don't patronise me, I see things clearly, as opposed to the clouded lense you appear to be gazing through. People say housing is so cheap up North but is it really? I think the stats say otherwise. This is a common false assumption made by people who don't actually know what they're talking about. Perhaps, you should change the channel from BBC One every once in a while.

I do wonder what percentage of the many millions who make up the population of London would see themselves as the elites - 5, perhaps 10%? That still leaves several million who have little left over after paying rent or an-eye watering mortgage. But, as I suggested in my previous friendly post, that is a point too often overlooked by those who tend to see everything in broad brushstrokes.

Many of the can't-afford-it-in London and the SE in general are, according to a tv programme I caught a couple of nights ago, thinking of heading north, east or west where, even if they drop income, they can afford the place they need or desire.

My goodness, a whole paragraph without any abuse, I'm impressed. Well Alan, I'm not sure you can blame Londoners for the weather but I would afford myself a smug grin if this storm gives a few of the elites got a good drenching. That's good, keep busy and stay on your toes, you never know when you might get lucky, a million pounds might be just around the corner. Then again, you aren't planning a field trip to the Middle East I don't suppose? Never mind, who needs money when you've got a bit of crown green bowling. Yes Tatton Hall isn't it, doesn't George Osbourne live around there? It's funny you should mention it, Ronaldo had a big house just down the road form me a few years ago, apparently he was seen there once. I suppose most of them have a few houses dotted around, I think Rooney's in Wilmslow before he flies off to China to get his £750,000 a week a far cry from the life of a part-timer who has to juggle two jobs.

Thanks for you caring advice. Fact is I'm out and about every day; indeed, my neighbours have asked where I'm off to on many occasions. I only use my car twice a week (a regular bowls morning in another town some miles from here), but walk and use the bus for all my shopping trips into town. Lots of the 'common people' on buses, and being in Yorkshire, very open for a chat. Indeed, just sitting and listening is really interesting. Earlier this week I overheard one old boy say 'where's this Spring weather got to, then?' Another fellow said: 'Heard on the radio it were 17 degrees in London yesterday'. First man: 'Yeah, those greedy b.....s down there get everything!'

It's not an uncommon opinion up here.

Cheshire, eh? Many years ago, I used to have a pint or two of Boddies (when it was popular) in the Tatton Arms in a town very different to those posh places where all the footballers live.

You should get out a bit more, converse with the 'common folk' you supposedly know so much about? A poor pensioner like Blair and Mandelson I suppose? No I am from a village in Cheshire, near to where many legends were set in stone. I am less concerned about which factor of Nivea sun lotion the President is applying, as to what is coming out of his mouth. Having said that, it isn't quite as ridiculous of some of the things I've heard from his 'liberal' critics.

By Jove, are you from Lancashire? They do say old enmities still exist, but I've never heard that sort of nonsense locally.
And, being a poor, old-fashioned pensioner, I wouldn't dream of subscribing to the channels that now show live test match cricket!

As to Trump, going by his strange manufactured(?)tan I fear he's ignored the safety warnings on the bottle or however he applies it. Personally, I find his resemblance to a 'pinko' rather weird.

Tha's disturbed thee watching Test cricket. Tha was meaning those there Brexiteers voted like meself was thinking o doin. There were a reight good number of 'em me thinks who went over yonder to vote for this 'ere EU 'in o out' malarkey. Has thou had a gander at this 'ere Trump fella, he's got somet up with his mits like he's got itches in his britches? The way me sees it is, ya can tek't the Trump outta the USA, but ya can't tek'd the USA outta the Trump. Reight, me thinks it's time for a good cup of Tetley our kid.

By the way, I've lived in Yorkshire for the last 6 years or so. I have worked and lived in East Anglia, The Midlands, the South coast, near London and in Scotland - all of which seems to make your mistaken 'Aah Yorkshire' comment both incorrect and rather silly.

I don't think I ever suggested it (giving a good kicking) was 'widespread'.

However, that description could easily be given to several interviews on TV and radio as to people's reasons voting intentions/decisions at the time of the referendum. It is certainly something I heard here (the North of England), a heartland of the 'leave vote, echoed by comments from locals who have lived in an area decimated by decades of decisions from 'down South.

Whether any would place blame on US-neocoms is, I suspect, rather doubtful!

I never said I did, that is your own position, in claiming that everyone who voted leave was voting on racial prejudice. A complete myth peddled by angry remainers which I have dispelled by telling you that there were people in ethnic minorities who voted leave, which they would never have done, had what you claim been true. I didn't vote, I simply meant leavers. Ahh Yorkshire, that explains a lot, you are like a Yorkshire Terrier snapping at people's heels so I thought I would take you on at your own game. So far, I would say you've gone from being on the ropes to a position where your team has already thrown in the towel but you're desperately still lashing out. You've also made the classic schoolboy error in trying to conflate race and religion. This is typical of liberal elites such as Hilary Clinton who talks of Islamophobia, as if the criticism of a religion is in some way an attack of an ethnic group. It isn't,. I have nothing against anyone of any race, religion, creed or colour, except perhaps, people from Yorkshire who we know are a bit special ;). So Alan, foiled again?

Alan Thomas | 20 February 2017 at 10:44 AM :
*** ... have you never heard of that portion who voted as they did simply to give someone a 'good kicking' - it was a fairly regular part of the media 'inquest' held after the referendum, and has certainly been mentioned here ***

As with their analysis of Trump's defeat of Clinton, that's the mainstream mass-media trying as best it can to trivialise the public's anger about establishment economic and social policies.
Campaigns may be vague or even omit some issues, yet win through apparently having been the only (viable within a given time and context) alternative to the agenda of those who rule.
So in that sense reference to the desire to deliver 'a good kicking' is not inaccurate -- but does deliberately try to label widespread public dissent as merely a superficial and momentary tantrum instead of a reasoned and ongoing rejection of the establishment agenda.
Having thus (directly and via its mass-media propaganda outlets) applied a 'superficiality' label to the wishes and resentments of the public, the allegedly knows-best establishment can then sneeringly dismiss all views except its own, and continue to inflict betrayal and corruption while still -- ever more absurdly -- claiming to be "democratic".
And that's pretty much what is happening with regard to Brexit -- the official 'in' and 'out' sides always were just differently wrapped presentations of the same basic bilge, serving the same big-corporate and financial interests, asset-stripping economic cultism, and ultimately the US-neocon empire.

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until the moderator has approved them. They must not exceed 500 words. Web links cannot be accepted, and may mean your whole comment is not published.